Chapter Text
Chapter 0: My Dad Accidentally Opens Up the Underworld
Nico di Angelo
Ω
You’d think being the son of Hades would come with some kind of warranty.
Maybe something like: If something goes wrong with the Underworld, please contact customer support. Refunds available for accidental apocalypses.
Unfortunately, no such luck.
It started with the silence.
The Underworld is never truly quiet. There’s always something. Chains rattling in the Fields of Punishment, spirits whispering in Asphodel, judges arguing over paperwork that probably hasn’t been updated since Ancient Greece. Even the River Styx has a sound, like a low, endless sigh.
But that morning, standing on the obsidian balcony outside my father’s throne room, everything felt… paused. Like the world had taken a breath and forgotten to let it out.
I didn’t like it.
“Dad?” I called.
My voice echoed out farther than usual. That was another bad sign. Sound shouldn’t travel that cleanly down here. The Underworld likes to swallow things. Light, hope, good moods, the occasional lost soul.
No answer.
I stepped inside the throne room. The place looked the same as always: black stone pillars, flickering green fire, shadows that never stayed still. My father’s throne loomed at the far end, all jagged edges and ancient authority.
Hades was standing in front of it, not sitting. That was strike three.
He was holding a bronze tablet covered in glowing Greek symbols, his dark cloak pooling around his feet like living shadow. His expression was focused. Which, coming from the god of the dead, is never comforting.
“Dad,” I said again, more cautiously. “What are you doing?”
He didn’t look at me. “Fixing a problem.”
“Last time someone said that,” I muttered, “Manhattan almost fell into Tartarus.”
That got his attention. He turned, eyes like cold embers, and gave me a look that said watch it, son.
“This is not your concern, Nico.”
Which is god-talk for this is absolutely your concern, but I don’t want to admit it.
I walked closer, peering at the tablet. The symbols were shifting, rearranging themselves like they couldn’t decide what they wanted to say. I recognized some of the magic—binding seals, passage wards, soul-counting runes.
“Those are gate controls,” I said slowly. “For the Underworld.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re… rewriting them?”
“I am correcting an imbalance,” Hades said. “Too many souls. Too much pressure. The system is straining.”
I stared at him. “You’re telling me the afterlife is… overcrowded?”
He frowned. “Do not trivialize this.”
“I’m not. I’m just—” I gestured helplessly. “That sounds really, really bad.”
Before he could respond, the floor shuddered.
Not a normal Underworld tremor. This was deeper, like something massive had shifted in the foundations of reality. The green flames along the walls flickered. Shadows stretched in the wrong directions.
The tablet in Hades’s hands flared with light.
“That’s not supposed to happen,” I said.
Hades’s jaw tightened. “Stand back, Nico.”
He pressed his hand to the tablet and spoke a command in Ancient Greek—old, powerful, the kind of words that made me nervous.
For a split second, everything froze.
Then the room cracked.
Not literally. No chunks of ceiling fell or anything—but the air itself seemed to split open, like invisible glass breaking. A cold wind rushed through the throne room, carrying the unmistakable feeling of wrongness.
Somewhere far, far away, I heard screaming.
A lot of screaming.
My father’s eyes widened just a fraction. For Hades, that’s basically full-on panic.
“No,” he said quietly.
The shadows on the walls started to move. Not their usual drifting. They were pulling, stretching toward something I couldn’t see. The floor pulsed with dark light, and for a terrifying moment, I felt the pull of the Underworld itself—like the doors had been thrown open and everything inside was shifting.
“Dad,” I said, my voice tight. “What did you just do?”
He didn’t answer me.
Instead, he turned and strode to the edge of the balcony overlooking the endless expanse of the dead. I followed, my stomach sinking with every step.
Down below, in the distance, I saw it.
Rifts.
Thin, jagged tears in the fabric of the Underworld, opening like wounds. And through them, things were moving the wrong way.
Souls aren’t supposed to leave.
They’re supposed to go down, get judged, and stay put—reincarnation paperwork pending, eternal reward or punishment assigned, end of story.
But now?
Now I could see shadows climbing upward. Being pushed upward.
“Dad,” I whispered. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”
Hads gripped the balcony rail so hard the stone cracked. “The gates… they overcorrected. The pressure had to go somewhere.”
“You vented the Underworld,” I said faintly.
He didn’t deny it.
The air rippled again, and for a brief moment, I caught a glimpse of the mortal world through one of the rifts—blue sky, green trees, sunlight that looked painfully bright compared to all this darkness.
And something else.
Something *moving* on the other side.
My chest went cold.
“Those souls,” I said. “They’re not… they’re not just going to pass on, are they?”
“No,” Hades said. “They are being forced back.”
Back into the world of the living.
I swallowed. “That’s bad.”
“Yes.”
“Like, really bad.”
“Yes, Nico.”
Another tremor ran through the Underworld, and more rifts flickered into existence, like stars going out in reverse.
Somewhere up there, Percy and the others were probably having a normal day. Training. Arguing. Doing all the things heroes do when the universe isn’t actively falling apart.
They had no idea what was about to start crawling its way back into their lives.
“I should warn them,” I said.
Hades finally looked at me. Really looked at me. His expression was a mix of frustration, worry, and something like regret.
“This will not be a simple problem to fix,” he said. “The boundaries between life and death have been… loosened.”
“Which means,” I said, already knowing the answer, “things that shouldn’t be walking around are going to start walking around.”
“Yes.”
I took a deep breath. “Great. I’ll get my sword.”
Because of course this was happening.
Because of course it started with my dad.
And because, apparently, saving the world once is never enough.